Four PHS alumni came back to school on Jan. 7 to provide current students with insight to the application process and college life at the College and Career Center-sponsored Alumni Day.

Sofia Siqueira, Caroline Novack, Tatum Burnett and Graham Low shared their experiences from their first semester of college, from academics to making friends to dealing with harsher weather. All four graduated from Piedmont in 2015 and are now freshmen in college.

Though the four students felt different levels of preparedness for college-level courses, they all felt that they were able to manage the academics.

“I felt like my classes at Piedmont prepared me pretty well,” Novack said. “Everyone here is serious about their education.”

College and Career Center Director Allison Bly created Alumni Days as a way to provide Piedmont and Millennium students with information from graduates about their college experiences.

“With having students come back and share their stories from college, I wanted to alleviate fears in the current student body about college and the application process,” Bly said. “These alumni are a great resource because they have very valuable information from their own experiences and because they’re close to the current students.”

Senior Daniel Champion decided to attend the event with his friends because he wanted to hear about the college experiences from people he had known from the year before.

“It was really cool to see these people I know a year later because they have changed so much since graduating and being in college,” Champion said.

Champion said that he is now more confident about the transition from high school to college.

“Something that I thought was interesting was that they all said they made a lot of new friends during the first week of school, but didn’t necessarily stick with these friends,” Champion said. “With more time, they were able to make deeper connections with other people. That was helpful and reassuring to hear.”

Sophomore Anna Campbell also attended the event because she was interested in hearing about the college experience.

“It was really interesting to learn about the specific campuses from people who go to these schools,” Campbell said. “I also liked hearing about what people do outside of school.”

Bly hopes to continue events like Alumni Days to give students rich resources for learning about college and making well-informed decisions.